Pentecostalisms, racism, and Human Rights

Abstract

Pentecostalism meant a break with Protestant anthropology hostage to the epistemology of Modernity. As Havey Cox explains, these American movements in the early years of the 20th century filled the ecstatic deficit left by evangelicals, pointing towards the affective system of knowledge of reality, an affective epistemology. If, on the one hand, the Pentecostal experience encouraged the shift from the margin to the center of corporeality, on the other, the violated and subjugated bodies became visible and empowered, because marginalized groups, excluded by the American and Brazilian Protestant establishment, were and are protagonists. Pentecostal movements are presented as a presence in the world and religious practice that reveals the defense of fundamental rights, especially in the militancy experience of racial justice, which does not mean a theoretical defense, but community experiences of excluded bodies that gain pneumatic status. The essay discusses the relationship between religion, human rights and racial issues, pointing out how Pentecostalism represents intuitions for a more fraternal and egalitarian society.